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The Human Tide

How Population Shaped the Modern World

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The Human Tide

By: Paul Morland
Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
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About this listen

 'Superbly explained' Washington Post

A dazzling new history of the modern world, as told through the remarkable story of population change.

Every phase since the advent of the industrial revolution - from the fate of the British Empire, to the global challenges from Germany, Japan and Russia, to America's emergence as a sole superpower, to the Arab Spring, to the long-term decline of economic growth that started with Japan and has now spread to Europe, to China's meteoric economy, to Brexit and the presidency of Donald Trump - can be explained better when we appreciate the meaning of demographic change across the world.The Human Tide is the first popular history book to redress the underestimated influence of population as a crucial factor in almost all of the major global shifts and events of the last two centuries - revealing how such events are connected by the invisible mutually catalysing forces of population.


This highly original history offers a brilliant and simple unifying theory for our understanding the last two hundred years: the power of sheer numbers. An ambitious, original, magisterial history of modernity, it taps into prominent preoccupations of our day and will transform our perception of history for many years to come.

(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited Europe Great Britain Politics & Government United States World Imperialism Socialism China Russia British Empire Africa War Military Social justice Middle Ages Imperial Japan Latin American Self-Determination Capitalism Colonial Period

Critic reviews

A readable, trenchant, up-to-date overview of the biggest story on the planet
Engrossing
Fascinating
An admirable introduction to a vital subject
Paul Morland has rudely awakened us to the hidden hand of demography in shaping history and politics in the modern world ... If you want to understand our times, you must read this book.
A fascinating account of how much sheer population numbers have mattered in human history - and why major demographic upheavals, happening now and over the next few decades, are going to affect us all
Population has been historically one of the key factors that has defined the relations between states. As Paul Morland shows in this nuanced, highly informative and rigorously argued book, it has now become the defining factor for the political dynamics within states. The Human Tide shows that we live in an age of hard and soft demographic engineering
As Morland argues arithmetically but convincingly, a society's rise or downfall is mirrored in its numbers
Rigorous and detailed
A clever analysis
'A fascinating account of how much sheer population numbers have mattered in human history - and why major demographic upheavals, happening now and over the next few decades, are going to affect us all'
All stars
Most relevant
This is a brilliant book which explains so much, without really banging its own drum. The author is quite modest about how much demographics explains about the whole if human history. Really it explains a lot, and the near future is pretty much mapped out in terms of likely trends. The format of the book is to go round the world country by country and explain how the same patterns repeat themselves again and again across the centuries and the continents. We're all individuals but together we act in very predictable ways.

Brilliant

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Some very thought provoking arguments - read in the tones of a BBC radio presenter. Well worth a listen, but perhaps also read the books on why history is governed by geography!

Intriguing and impeccably read

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I am half way through this book. Full of great stuff BUT Zeb reads it like a continuity announcer, his sentences rising and falling as if to bring forward the next instalment. I may not get to the end because of it. If it wasnt so interesting I would have jacked it after chapter 1.

fascinating but....

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